Consumer Behavior and Behavioral Biases in the Sharing Economy

Sharing business models have been rapidly growing over the past decade. The general idea behind these platforms is that they offer consumers temporary access to (underutilized) products instead of ownership, which is mediated by the Internet. Apart from its economic relevance, the Sharing Economy is of particular interest to researchers, as prior studies have shown that the Sharing Economy seems to fundamentally change consumers´ consumption patterns. This dissertation systematically explores consumer behavior and behavioral biases in the Sharing Economy. More specifically, this dissertation analyzes the influence of behavioral biases on consumers´ tariff choice decisions in a sharing context. In doing so, this dissertation employs empirical and experimental methods and draws on theories from both marketing and behavioral economics. This dissertation consists of four articles. Article 1 and Article 2 are conceptual papers that set the foundation of this dissertation by providing theoretical insights on the state-of-the-art research on the Sharing Economy and on behavioral biases in marketing. Building on this theoretical foundation, two empirical articles (Article 3 and Article 4) analyze different research questions related to consumers´ decision-making in a tariff choice context.

Katharina Dowling is a Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Electronic Commerce and Digital Markets at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München - Munich School of Management. She holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. from the University of Mannheim and the ESSEC Business School in Paris. She earned her Ph.D. in 2019 at LMU´s Munich School of Management.

Martin Spann is a Professor of Electronic Commerce and Digital Markets at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München - Munich School of Management. Further, he serves as Dean of Research of the Munich School of Management, Director of the LMU Center for Advanced Management Studies (LMU CAMS), and board member of the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM). He is a member of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). He studied Economics at the University of Kiel and earned his PhD (2002) as well as his Habilitation (2005) from Goethe University Frankfurt. From 2005 to 2010, he was a Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Passau. He has been a visiting scholar/professor at New York University (NYU), the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), the University of Southern California (USC) and Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.